Miami Vice: The Game review

Aside from doomed bad guys, each of the linear levels are also filled with drugs that you'll need to confiscate. Aside from boosting your reputation - vital to cutting undercover deals - the narcotics you snag give you something to barter with. Before each mission, for example, you'll need to slip a few ounces to your informant to learn where drugs, enemies and other important objects will be located. You can also sell your contraband to around a dozen different street dealers, or - for really big money - you can unlock the location of a drug, meth or coke baron and engage in a horribly difficult "keep the arrow in the blue area" minigame to earn his trust. Do well, and you'll walk away with a ton of cash. Fail, and one of you is going to end up dead.

The actual cash can be spent on new guns, gun upgrades and even designer suits. And yeah, the suits actually factor into gameplay; aside from your detective's normally scruffy threads, you can buy a sleek, upgradeable designer suit (which gives you a hefty reputation bonus) or bulky police armor.

To unlock the really cool stuff between missions, you'll need to hack "flashrams" found in each level. Shockingly, the hacking minigame is actually an addictive little three-stage action-puzzler, where players have to set off charged bursts to ignite chain reactions and make floating cubes explode.

Miami Vice also features an ad-hoc co-op mode, which enables two players to storm through the game as Crockett and Tubbs. All of the between-mission stuff is taken out to keep things moving quickly, but all the levels are intact, and perforating thugs is always more fun with a friend along.